Essential Newbie Tips

The built-in guide in Terraria is really great, but he doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. So I’ve made a list of the things I wish I knew when I started playing the game.

Exploration Tips:

Always bring platforms/wood with you wherever you go, they will help immensely.

To place torches underwater dig 1 block in from the water source and place a torch in the wall there.

The same method can be used to see ores and other caves underground by digging 4 blocks into the wall and placing a torch.

Whenever you are walking around outside cut down any grass you see, this will give mushrooms a chance to grow (particularly effective at night).

The maximum height you can place a block above your head (6 blocks I believe) is the same number of blocks you can jump.

To find some easy chests simply go to the walk to the of the world (past the corruption on both sides) and into the ocean, at the bottom of the ocean there will almost certainly be a chest (or two 🙂 ).

Playing on a small map makes it easier to find loot and goodies, as larger maps just seem to spread everything out more.

Pay attention to the moon, as it seems to represent the monster spawn frequency. That is, there will be a lot more monsters that appear at night if there is a full moon as opposed to when there is a new moon. On a new moon there will sometimes be almost no monsters at night.

Misc Tips:

Your “workstation” should have a workbench, a furnace, an anvil and a bottle (can be placed on the workbench or on a separate table). You should be able to stand in one area and reach all of these things at the same time.

The Hammer is used to pick up/break things like chests (they must be empty to be picked up), workbenches, chairs, tables and break the background “walls” (good because monsters can spawn in your house if it has a dirt wall).

Place a block on the inside of the door during Blood Moon so that the zombies cannot open it, you can open it however and kill as many zombies as you like without injury. Also very useful for locking NPC’s in rooms…

Doors can be used to control water and lava, and will cause sand placed on top of them to fall should the door be opened. This is very useful for making traps.

If you are falling and may take falling damage shoot your grappling hook at the ground before you land and you will not take any damage.

You lose 50% of your coins upon death, so be sure to put them into a chest or piggy bank (bought from the merchant) so you don’t lose them. Carrying a piggy bank with you is a good way to ensure that you don’t lose coins when you die.

The piggy bank transfers is character dependent but transfers over worlds and over multiplayer and singleplayer. Only you can see the contents of your piggy bank.

To build long very efficient tunnels dig a 3 block wide tunnel straight down with a 3 block deep water pool at the bottom, then place 1 wooden platform on one side. This makes it so you can drop down one side and climb up the other easily.

Shadow Orbs can be found at the bottom of deep chasms in the corruption area, break them with a hammer to get random loot, a chance that a meteorite will fall, and a chance that a boss will spawn (Eye of Cthulhu my randomly spawn, and The Eater of Worlds will spawn every third orb destroyed. You will need purification powder (available from the Dryad) or Dynamite (available from the demolitionist and chests) to break through the Ebonstone to reach them.

Each NPC that moves in will decrease the spawn rate of monsters near your house.

To skip night easily open up your world as a multiplayer server, drag the moon/sun across the sky and then go back to singleplayer.

Have any more tips you know of that you think should be on this list? Let me know in the comments or send me a message!

No related posts.

Connor Parrish

You might want to add that many “floating islands” contain a chest inside of a room of different walls and tiles. If the player has a long ranged weapon from a loot, they can easily discover these, mostly secret, islands.

John Winkler

If you have a particular area you want to dig through that is surrounded by water or lava, just you can build a tunnel out of any material (wood,stone,etc) and fill it in. When you pick through the area you just placed, it will be clear, meaning that you now have a tunnel through the lava/water and you are free to explore again.

Tomgl Laslie

stupid

Tomlg Laslie

jk
awsome

Dr Dragontamer

Awesome! So that’s how you skip nighttime…

Nateghnia

wow this was sooooooooooooo NOT helpful apart from skipping nighttime anyway, whats an NPC?

Dr. Bones

NPC = Means Non-Playable-Character,mainly used of helpful characters that give you tips or sell something

wtfasshat

Rude noob.

Grega

Hello. Thanks great tips!
I’ve just recently started to play Terraria and I would like to add:

-make yourself and Iron pick ASAP (it digs faster and will save you hours of digging on the long run) (you make it with anvil, it cost 7 iron bars, I think)
-while holding shift, your character will try to use an appropriate tool for where your cursor is (if you have a sword equipped and move your cursor over a tree and hold shift, your character will start using an axe as long as u hold shift. If there is nothing he will use a torch which is mega usefull when ur in a cave)
-you can use “Q” to throw your equipped torch down a cave shaft
-if you want to make a new spawn point in a map, you need a livable house (walls, table, chair) and a bed. Right-click the bed to set a spawn point. If successful you will get a message in the bottom left corner.
-for the start you can make a small world, quickly explore it, delete it and make a new one for quick resources
-if you find red heart stones in caves use your hammer until you brake it – then you can eat it for permanet HP increase
-when you gather 10 stars you can make a mana stone for permanent mana increase